Nearly eight decades after independence, Pakistan's unfinished task is therefore to translate political sovereignty into greater fiscal sovereignty. Fiscal independence does not mean that Pakistan should never borrow, disengage from international financial institutions or attempt to finance every national requirement through taxation. Nor can fiscal independence rest permanently on temporary expenditure compression or non-tax revenue streams that may not remain available at the same level every year. Nor can Pakistan tax its way to fiscal independence by repeatedly increasing the state's dependence on the same narrow group of taxpayers. Fiscal independence also depends upon economic growth.